Familial Consequences
by One of the Colorless
Summary: Going through some of his parent's old things, gifted to him by Sirius, Harry learns about the squib brother that nobody knew he had. But is his brother still a squib after coming face to face with Death magic? Harry is forced to face not only that question, but others including his brother's connections, relationships, unorthodox childhood, and job. No pairings currently.
1. Prologue

**A/N: Hello again dear readers! It sure has been a long time, and I know that you're probably irritated that this isn't a new chapter of "Wands, Noahs, and Innocence", but be assured that that particular fic and it's sequel are back on track! I think I might go back and edit some things before I start posting new chapters, but it shouldn't be too long now. Oh, and as always...**

Disclaimer: This story is written purely for fun; all intellectual property and characters belong to their rightful creators/owners.

_**Important Reader's Note**: In canon, Harry was born on July 31, 1980, and Matt was born on February 1, 1990. For the sake of this story I have skewed the HP time line so that James and Lily married in 1981 rather than 1978, and that Lily was pregnant before they were married. Therefore, there was a three year gap between Lily and James graduating Hogwarts and their marriage. Furthermore, Matt will be born in 1982, and Harry in 1986, giving them about a four year difference. Matt was dropped off at Wammy's in 1985, and Harry will be starting Hogwarts in 1997. The story begins the Summer before Harry's fifth year, in 2002. Harry is 15, Matt is 19, and Mello is 20 (I think?). Both Mello and Matt have left Wammy's House and are working in the mafia. I don't care how old Mello was when he gained his position in canon, he is a mafia boss here. _

_ Another important point, is that Matt and Mello left Wammy's before L's death, and after it, the three teamed up in their anger, taking down Kira and ending his reign of terror. For now, Light and Misa are not involved in the plot. Mello ignores Near's existence, but Matt (very) occasionally messages him. Due to an accident, however, Mello has his scar._

**Prologue**

Even among the special residents of Wammy's house, Mail was a odd case. It had been a surprise to everyone, especially the staff when, on a brisk Spring morning, a young couple arrived with their redheaded son. No one was sure how the pair had heard of the orphanage, but there wasn't much that the staff could do but usher them in out of the cold.

"You want us to board him?" the orphanage's founder and curator, Quillish Wammy, raised his graying eyebrows at the trio, paying special attention to the small boy sitting quietly in his mother's lap. "I'm sorry to ask this of you, I know that it's an incredibly odd request," the mother, named Lily Evans-Potter, said quietly, peering adoringly down at her child, "but Mail is... to be quite frank he's too smart for us." Wammy quickly schooled his features in order to not betray his shock, it was one thing for the couple to know the whereabouts and existence of the orphanage, it was much more worrying that they knew what type of children the place held. "Not only that, but..." the beautiful redhead bit her lip, "there is something of a... religious extremist after my husband and I. He doesn't know of Mail's existence right now, but..." Wammy nodded his head sagely. "You're worried."

"Very worried," the woman's husband piped in, "Not only is Lily pregnant again," the woman blushed slightly, "but Mail is basically everything that the madman chasing us hates." Ruffling his child's hair, James was the perfect image of a distraught father. "We'll keep in touch and pay you, of course. And we'll visit any chance that we have."

Wammy looked down at the child who, during the course of the conversation, had somehow managed to escape from his mother's grasp and was meticulously reassembling a security camera that had been taken down for repairs. His mother blushed again, at Wammy's amused expression, shooting the man an embarrassed glance, "We don't really have electronics at home..."

Even from where he was sitting, Wammy could tell that the camera was close to being repaired, and the parents were obviously terrified for their son; he would have to do some research on them, but... "We should be able to find a space for young Mail here. We have some details to go over of course, including your boy's pseudonym..."

o O o

Lily and James Potter remained true to their word, sending money, gifts, and letters to the orphanage and their son, now going by the name of Matt Jeevas, when they couldn't visit. Things were getting tense around them, the religious extremist – who, oddly enough, Wammy was having difficulty finding information on, (a cover-up?) - becoming more active. Mail, on the other hand, was happy. He was challenged at Wammy's, and, given that it was in the Muggle world, there was nothing wrong with him being unable to use magic. No one there even knew about magic.

Things continued in a blissful manner for all parties involved until, in the Summer of 1986, a little over a year since Mail had arrived at Wammy's House, Lily and James' letters suddenly stopped coming.


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

It wasn't the wizarding world's fault, Harry knew, that he had never known that he had a brother. Nobody had known; not Sirius, not Dumbledore, not the Dursleys. It was terrible to think that, if Sirius had never shown him that old trunk, one of very few items remaining after the fire destroyed his family's old home in Godric's Hollow, he still wouldn't know.

o O o

_ Harry had just returned from his farce of a trial when his godfather spirited he and his friends to a small room off of one of the upstairs hallways, a room containing nothing but an old trunk. The trunk didn't look like anything special: solid wood, without decoration, sealed shut, and covered in only slightly less dust than the rest of the house. Harry hadn't thought anything of it until Sirius mentioned that it had belonged to his parents._

_ Likely due to a spell, the trunk unlocked as soon as Harry laid a hand on it and he, along with Sirius, Ron, and Hermione spent a few hours digging through it. The trunk had an expansion charm on it, and Harry was surprised by how much it held. Simply by sifting through everything, the group had found an old golden snitch, ("The first one that James ever caught," Sirius said tearfully,) some old school books (Lily's), photographs that moved, photographs that didn't, his mother's wedding dress, and some baby items, including tiny shoes and a heavily chewed blanket. It was in a small box, tucked into the left back corner that Ron had found a stack of letters._

_ The letters themselves had been written on muggle paper rather than parchment, something which had baffled Ron ("How do they make it so white?") and surprised Sirius, and most were copies of letters that had already been sent. Only one letter, sitting on top of the pile, hadn't been delivered; there were two copies of it in the box. It broke Harry's heart to realize that his parents must have been planning to send it soon, for a copy had already been stuck into an envelope, just waiting to be addressed._

_ It had been a surprise to discover that some of the letters were written not in the loopy lettering of his mother, or the more jagged calligraphy of his father, but in the, surprisingly neat but still obvious, scrawl of a child; some of the later letters had even been typed (once again amazing Ron). Furthermore, everything was addressed to a British orphanage._

_ The group took a surprising amount of time to make sense of the endearments littered throughout the letters. If it hadn't been both his parents writing them, and the fact that they were writing to a child, Harry might have been convinced that either his mother or his father was having an affair. As it was, none of the group considered the fact that the Potters might have been writing to a blood relative until they came across a muggle photograph at the bottom of the box._

_ Both Lily and James were in the photo, leading Harry to assume that a nurse had taken it, as they were in what was obviously a muggle hospital. His father was standing off to the left, positively beaming, holding the hand of his mother who was sitting up in bed, smiling bright as the sun, and holding a small bundle of blue. _

_ At Grimmauld Place, the four people in the room stared mutely in shock. Lily and James had had another baby, one that they had kept hidden; Harry had to have been born second, for there was no time for his parents to have a baby after he had been born. Why had the baby been kept a secret? ("They weren't married," Sirius said weakly, "They're not wearing rings yet.") How had they kept it a secret? ("There are spells," Hermione said softly, worried eyes focused on Harry.) Why was he in an orphanage? His parents had obviously loved him. And, perhaps most importantly, where was he now?_

o O o

Mr. and Mrs. Granger had been kind enough to book a flight to Japan as soon as Hermione told them about what had happened, (locator charms were handy things, thank you Sirius). Harry had wheedled Dumbledore into letting Harry spend some time with the Grangers, away from the fuss of Grimmauld Place, in order to absorb this new information; the headmaster, busy planning for the school year anyway, agreed that it would be best. He probably didn't think that Harry would dare venture very far after his recent scare. But, what Dumbledore didn't know wouldn't hurt him, and as almost anyone at Hogwarts would tell you, very little on the face of the planet could stop a determined Harry Potter, anyway.

o O o

Mello was on his guard as soon as he heard the first knock. Neither he nor Matt had ordered anything, and no one besides deliverymen risked coming to their apartment. He cocked his head, blond hair falling into his face as he listened to the shower run. The water was already trickling off, Matt no doubt having heard the door and come to the same conclusion as he himself had. The redhead would be out soon.

Another knock sounded and Mello grimaced, pushing himself up off the couch, and grabbing a gun. He didn't know what to expect, but he would be prepared, no matter who was outside.

o O o

Drawing his fist back, Harry frowned. Was there nobody home? Just as he was about to turn to look beseechingly at the Grangers, the sharp sound of a lock being released caught his attention. A cold blue eye glared out at him from a crack in the doorway, startling in its intensity. "What the fuck do you want?" The tone was glacial. Harry swallowed. Was this his brother? Merlin, he hoped not.

"H-hello," he began weakly, thanking the heavens that the question was in English as he hadn't thought to get a translating charm. "My name is Harry..." he decided to forgo giving his last name when he saw the door begin to close, the person on the other end, a man by the sounds of it, starting to get impatient. "Is there a Mail Potter here?"

Harry knew he had made a mistake as soon as he finished his question. Before he was even done speaking that cold eye had narrowed to a slit. He went to retreat, but the door slammed open before he could, and he came face to face with the rounded muzzle of a gun. Behind him, Hermione screamed and Harry himself swallowed nervously. The owner of the blue eye was fully visible now, a terrifying blond, a scar covering half his face. "And just where did you hear that name?" the man spat, the brunt of his focus on the teenager in front of him.

Somebody whimpered. Harry thought that it might have been him.

o O o

Mello didn't know what he was expecting, but a group of foreigners sure as hell wasn't it. He had just been getting ready to close the door, the idiots obviously had the wrong house, when Matt's name, his real name, came out of the scrawny kid's mouth. As far as he knew, there were only seven people in the world who knew that moniker, and of those seven two were dead, two lived in that very apartment, two were missing, and one was an antisocial freak. Regardless of how he felt about the guy, (hatred, he hated the guy,) Mello knew very well that Near would never tell anyone Matt's real name or location; it was a Wammy thing. Yet, somehow, these strangers knew all of that highly classified information. It didn't matter how old these people were or what they did for a living, they had just made it to the top of Mello's quite substantial hit-list.

The blond blocked the doorway with his body, sending a quick glare to stop the redhead hurrying up behind him. Nobody was getting to Matt.

o O o

Hermione wanted to cry. First, she and her parents had had to traipse through this terrible neighborhood - luckily it was daytime in Japan, she didn't even want to think about what this place would be like at night – and now Harry, her best friend, had a gun pointed at his head, an absolutely terrifying blond glaring daggers at them. How had things gone so wrong? This man couldn't be Harry's brother, it was impossible as there were no blonds in Harry's family tree. But in that case who was he? And what did he have to do with Harry's brother?

"Now, now," Mr. Granger soothed, "I'm sure this is just a misunderstanding. Please, put the gun down-"

"Don't joke with me!" the blond hissed, "How did you find this place? And for the love of God, where did you get that name?" Behind her husband, Mrs. Granger looked around nervously. It didn't look like anybody was coming to help them, weren't there any police in this place? She knew that the children had their wands, but they couldn't use them outside of school. The dentist had never been more scared in her life.

"Alright, sir," Mr. Granger tried again, "We understand. We'll leave. Now, if you would just let the boy go-" The blond cut him off, growling, and pushed the gun harder into Harry's skull prompting a small exclamation of pain. "I'll ask you one more time. Where. Did you learn. That name?"

Harry was the one to speak up, "It was in a letter! From my mom," he explained, stumbling over his words slightly. The blond snorted again, casting another quick glance behind him. The young wizard had a hunch about who he was looking at. "She and my dad were killed, when I was just a baby." Harry had the distinct feeling that he was about to be pistol-whipped into silence, so he hurried out his next words, "Their names were Lily and James Potter. I'm looking for my brother."

o O o

Matt knew something was wrong when he heard his friend slam open the door, and he was concerned when Mello warned him to stay inside. It was obvious that the blond was taking care of whatever problem had appeared, however, and Matt was content to let him until he heard a British voice (All of the visitors seemed to be British. His own accent had disappeared long ago,) utter the word 'brother'. It was possible he supposed. His mom had been pregnant when he'd last seen her and a tracking spell would be able to easily find a blood relative.

"My mom was pregnant the last time I saw her, Mello," Matt piped up, careful to speak in Japanese. If there was even a chance... The mafia boss, and wouldn't that be fun to explain if this really were Matt's brother, made a tsking noise behind his teeth before baring them in a manner eerily reminiscent of a wolf. "Lucky break, brat," he said, shaking the kid back and forth to a noise of protest from the family standing a few feet away. Hey, some fear was good, right? "Really fucking lucky." He shoved the kid inside and turned his icy glare on the fidgeting brunettes. The family quickly hurried inside, unwilling to leave the bespectacled kid alone in a potentially dangerous environment. Mello snorted and slammed the door behind them. Nobody saw the quick text that he sent.

o O o

Harry took only a moment to look around the apartment – it was filled with electronics equipment and a worrying amount of weapons – before turning his attention to the man in front of him, breath catching in his throat. If Harry had inherited his father's looks, then the man in front of him had inherited mostly his, their, mother's. The man was fairly tall, appearing to stand about an inch shorter than his (still terrifying and glaring) friend, with dark red hair, and a cigarette between his lips. Unfortunately, the man's eyes were covered by a pair of tinted goggles, but the younger Potter was sure that if he could see those eyes they would be a shade of brilliant green.

A tense silence blanketed the room as the redhead stubbed his cigarette into a nearby ashtray and blew out a small cloud of smoke. "I'm Matt," he began, speaking in perfect English, "now who the hell are you?"


End file.
